


Trust

by jkateel



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Revelations, Spoilers for blackwall's personal quest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-28 04:06:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2718194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jkateel/pseuds/jkateel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Blackwall's past is revealed, Araniel Lavellan has a lot to learn about trust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trust

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Blackwall's personal quest, post "Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts" and "Here Lies The Abyss."

Solas had asked her once if the anchor had changed her.

Araniel had said no, and had meant it. Still meant it. She was still the same Dalish elf she had always been, albeit with so much more responsibilities never meant for someone in her position.

That alone should have been enough to make her realize it was the Inquisition that was changing her, but she doesn’t realize it until she’s staring through iron bars, down at a kneeling, grieving Blackwall.

No. _Rainier._ A liar. A traitor. Someone she had trusted. Someone she would have taken an arrow for if it came down to it. Someone she had considered her friend.

It’s there—with Rainier on his knees, lost to his guilt; her towering over him, no pity to be found—that she feels the change. It so quietly settles over her skin and sinks in, her heart growing cold, and her voice colder. It’s not an unfamiliar feeling—she needed to be cold when she slit the throats of prey, back when she was only a hunter—but there are no kind words here. This isn’t a sacrifice.

“You’re pathetic,” she tells Rainier, and then leaves, both the prison, and the liar to his fate.

The whole unexpected trip to Val Royeaux has cost them precious time—time better spent on Corypheus. Another reason to be angry at Rainier, but it does give Araniel precious time to think. She wonders why it’s _him_ , after everything else she’s been through, that changes her. Blackwall had never been unkind to her; had always offered her good advice; had always seemed like a good man.

But perhaps that is it: She now as to look at everyone she’s met on her journey, and really think. Were they good men and women? Or were they hiding something dark just like Rainier?

Trust is everything in a Dalish clan—their very survival depends on it. But this is a shem world, and trust seems to be worth very little in it.

“Was I naïve?” she asks Cullen quietly, in the carriage on their return trip to Skyhold. Though it’s harder now, she likes to think she still trusts Cullen. He had trusted her with his secrets after all.

Her commander looks… sad. His hands shake a little as he swallows. “No,” he says with a sigh. “When those you trust betray you, you must remember you are not at fault, Inquisitor.”

Araniel looks away from him. Does she blame herself? Yes, yes she does, for being so foolish. So _trusting_. For hating that she has to look at the world through new eyes, and hate what she sees—when she should have been looking through those eyes all along.

“But as you’ll find, it is a hard lesson to learn,” Cullen adds quietly. He sounds tired now. Remorseful. “Do not be surprised if it changes you … and not always for the better.”

 _Too late_ , she thinks, and closes her eyes.


End file.
